The writer got mad when a goblin shoved Astarion off a cliff. It reminded me of when I had Karlach shove a goblin in lava, then a goblin ran up and shoved HER in the lava. I didnāt get mad; I took it as a learning moment: enemies can shove me back, so move away from the lava.
DND 5e is a horrible system. Bg3 would be better if it was built on something else. The reasons they focus on in this article arenāt really the reasons why.
the adventuring day is trash. Itās especially bad when thereās no human dm to be like āno you JUST had a long rest you canāt have anotherā. Though apparently most tables do one fight per long rest on average anyway, which is insane. Thatās not how the game is balanced! Bg3 kind of sort of limits you by making you get supplies, but that doesnāt really make a big impact. Also thereās good berries.
thereās very little room for mechanical customization and optimization. You pick a subclass, skills to be slightly better at, and some stats that matter but not a whole lot. Pretty much every early character is going to do their main thing at +5. But that modifier is dwarfed but the comparably huge 1d20 random factor.
I didnāt even notice I wasnāt proficient in my weapon on a new game the other day for like an hour. I lost the +2 Prof bonus but the +1 magic bonus mostly made up for that. And since the random factor of 1d20 is so big in comparison, it doesnāt make a big difference.
But character mechanics are very shallow, especially at low level. Compare pillars of eternity 2 where there are many more classes, class combinations, and the way weapons and armor work is actually interesting.
dndās armor system is kind of stupid. This is a dead horse. But like come on ac as avoidance, no concept of damage reduction (outside of one feat and rare sources of 50% reduction).
no degree of success or failure. Rolling a 30 vs a target of 5 is the same as rolling 5. A human dm will probably be better here, and they could have programmed it for some of the skill checks. But for combat thatās not how DND works.
the assumed miss rate is pretty high. Whole turns can go by where everyone just misses. This is better at 5th level where you have two attacks, but low level can become a slog.
they didnāt implement take 10 (or 20) so the game has a lot of boring rolls that donāt really mean anything. Mostly picking locks and searching. Itās very save scummy, especially when failure is just a dead end.
personally I vastly prefer a low random factor. I liked how new Vegas skill checks were either you had it or you didnāt. No save scumming. No āwhy did my barbarian roll so high on arcana but my wizard at +10 rolled so poorlyā
1d20+stuff gives flat probability, which I dislike. Every outcome on the die is equally likely. That doesnāt feel good to me.
I could go on but itās late. 5e kind of sucks. Article didnāt nail why.
magic feels really bad in this system early on when all they canreally do is spam cantrip after missing all their spells
plus healing spells feel very weak compared to potions
Potions got Buffed in the game iirc normaly drinking one I an Action not a bonusaction
That is correct. Although many, many tables have that as a homebrew rule too.
Thereās also the fact that generally DND magic has every spell as a bespoke effect. Thereās not an underlying system you can reason about. Youāre not really expected to make your own spells. You donāt really tweak the ones you get very much. What can you do with a 4th level slot vs 5th? You can kind of infer from the examples, and maybe thereās details in the DMG somewhere , but itās not foregrounded.
They also are very, well, mechanical rather than magical. You declare youāre casting, check off the spell slot, and the spell just happens. Some people might prefer this taste, but it makes it feel very mundane and bland to me . Compare like Mage (awakening, 2e) where youāre always looking for ways to stretch how far your spells can go, balancing risk, and looking for thematic boosts.
The ālooking for ways to stretch how far your spells can goā bit from Mage always struck me as āplaying mother-may-I with the Storyteller.ā I really prefer it as a player when my abilities do what they say they do, and as a DM when my playersā abilities donāt require me to make too many judgment calls, which can lead to players who are more persuasive IRL getting their way more often than players who arenāt.
I think I meant more about āI can take a -6 on the roll to affect all the guys and risk it not workingā or āIāll risk three dice on paradoxā for stretching your spells rather than āI can totally cure cancer with life 2, right??ā
DND doesnāt really have much tactical depth for the spells. They do what they say and always work (unless saved against). You never get the āI donāt know if I have another spell on me!ā trope.
What you meant I think shows up in DND too. Players being like ācan I use mage hand to swing a sword?ā or ācan I use create water to drown him?ā Thatās more an annoying player problem, but I see what you mean about some systems enable it more than others.
Youād probably really dislike Fate, then, where itās almost entirely based on what the table agrees makes sense for your free form written character traits.
5e is fine. Itās an overcorrection from the disaster of 4e. 3.5 was really good but it did suffer from classic slow combat and overload of bonuses/penalties at mid-high level. But if you donāt like 5e, go play something else. Maybe Pathfinder.
But if you just hate d&d in general but like rpgs in general, then not have I got some bad news for you. Every single RPG in existence owes itās creation to d&d. All of them. Show a little fucking respect.
āWeāve got both kinds of music here. Country and westernā
My dude if you donāt like DND you probably wonāt like its brother Pathfinder. There are many, many, rpgs out there that arenāt a close relative. Pbta is huge. Fate is old but good. Gurps has been around forever. WoD/CofD is dear to me.
Lol to WOTC? Fat fucking chance. This is such a bad take.
No
Whatās crazy is the more I learn about 3.5, the more it seems perfect for a CRPG where the game is keeping track of everything for you and does the calculations in a split second.
This is so easily disproven that Iām wondering whether this is a troll comment. There are many well known RPGs that were developed independently and contemporary to D&D, which themselves have many derivatives. GDW published Traveller in 1977. Chaosium published Runequest in 1978 and Call of Cthulhu in 1981. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone have been writing Fighting Fantasy books since 1982.
D&D itself is based partially on Dave Arnesonās Blackmoor game, which heād been designing since 1971.